News

A pair of bills introduced in the Florida legislature — House Bill 989 and Senate Bill 1210 — are ostensibly aimed at empowering taxpayers to object to the use of specific instructional materials in the public schools, for example on the grounds that they fail to provide "a noninflammatory, objective, and balanced viewpoint on issues." There is reason to believe that evolution and climate change are among the targets.

Indiana's Senate Resolution 17, which targets the teaching of evolution in Indiana's public schools, was passed on a 7-3 vote by the Senate Committee on Education and Career Development on February 22, 2017.

Senate Resolution 59, introduced in the United States Senate on February 10, 2017, would, if passed, express the Senate's support of designating February 12, 2017, as Darwin Day, and its recognition of "Charles Darwin as a worthy symbol on which to celebrate the achievements of reason, science, and the advancement of human knowledge."

NCSE is pleased to announce the winners of the Friend of Darwin award for 2017: Edward J. Larson, the Pepperdine University historian and legal scholar who won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1997 book about the Scopes trial, Summer for the Gods; Richard E. Lenski, the Michigan State University evolutionary biologist famed for his E. coli Long-Term Experimental Evolution Project; and Daniel J. Phelps, a geologist and unrelenting critic of a young-earth creationist ministry headquartered in his native Kentucky.

"The House Education Committee voted Thursday [February 9, 2017] to remove references to climate change and human impact on the environment from a new set of science standards," according to Idaho Ed News (February 9, 2017).